


WHAT HAPPENS IN VIGIL'S KEEP STAYS IN VIGIL'S KEEP

by spicyshimmy



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-26
Updated: 2011-09-26
Packaged: 2017-10-24 01:27:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/257329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyshimmy/pseuds/spicyshimmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Payroo and Choowy @ tumblr. Anders and Oghren share a night of passion--except neither of them can remember it. <i>What happened at Vigil’s Keep stayed at Vigil’s Keep—at least until the tongues started wagging. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	WHAT HAPPENS IN VIGIL'S KEEP STAYS IN VIGIL'S KEEP

What happened at Vigil’s Keep stayed at Vigil’s Keep—at least until the tongues started wagging.

Soldiers, Anders had discovered, were as enamored of gossip as chantry sisters or bored acolytes, senior enchanters or mages not yet passed their Harrowing. Barracks were just like a tower, only flatter to the ground, stuffed full of sweaty summer bodies and idle chatter all the same.

Love of a good story, full of someone else’s embarrassment and suffering, was the one thing they all had in common—or one of two things, if you also counted personal demons.

‘Did you hear about the healer and the dwarf?’ one of the hammer-heads was asking his companion, bluff broken nose to bluff scarred cheek, beneath the shadow of two scuffed helms.

Some guardsmen had jaws that flapped worse than a visor with a loose hinge in need of tightening.

‘I _beg_ your pardon?’ Anders asked, skidding to a halt along the hall, and tried—through his headache—to remember his elusive _last night_.

*

It had all started with dwarven ale—how most of these stories began, though never the good ones, tragedies more frequent than their comedic or romantic counterparts. ‘Made it myself,’ Oghren had said, and Nathaniel had implied it was too strong for _certain_ constitutions, which made drinking it a matter not of personal demons, but of personal pride.

The tankard was larger than Justice’s head, and smelled about the same as his rotting flesh.

‘Just the way we got it back home,’ Oghren added, breath hot and rank as fresh markers of mabari dominance.

‘To freedom!’ Anders remembered cheering, the clatter of metal staves on the tankard clinking with the toast, disgusted snorts and unappreciative leers that needed a good dose of hearty apostate optimism, the best cure Anders had for abominable personalities. ‘Turn that frown in some other direction, Nathaniel,’ Anders added, knowing full well he lacked the facial muscles for the task.

But after the first sip, even the finest spirit healer couldn’t mend the gaps in memory, holes burned into the brain by Oghren’s special brew. Twelve whiskeys in one, he said, and a pinch of something special, but even he couldn’t figure out what it was, pocket lint or skin flakes or poison itself from a Crow’s secret stash.

Whatever it was, Anders’s mouth tasted of mud the next morning, and dog fur and sawdust, and something else, a piquant flavor with impressive legs and a fine Orzammar terroir—metallic and warm as a dwarven forge—with Oghren under the barrel, uncorked tap dripping into his beard.

‘Whatta vision,’ Oghren mumbled, and snuggled close.

Anders ran, but the damage was already done, and by midday the rumors were swirling Vigil’s Keep like hops in the bottom of Anders’s empty tankard.

*

It was Nathaniel he found first, not because of their special bond—rogue to renegade, big nose to long one—but because he was occupying Anders’s favorite hiding spot in the cellars, mixing his secret flasks, being gloomy and pale and discreet.

‘Hello, _Nathaniel,_ ’ Anders said, casually removing a stray cobweb from the crumpled feathers of his left pauldron.

‘I don’t know anything,’ Nathaniel said. Too quickly, even by Anders’s impaired standards, with the headache he’d been nursing—literally—since the first cruel light of day.

Anders shimmied closer and plopped down on a friendly stone slab, one that was probably someone’s revered gravesite. Amaranthine architecture was always so particular, always involved skeletons and other assorted dead people.

‘Nathaniel,’ Anders said. He reached out to pluck Grandfather Howe’s well-oiled bowstring, fingerpads trembling against the taut strand of animal gut, like playing a lute without the proper reverberation. ‘I don’t think you’re appreciating the gravity of my dilemma here, not to mention the importance of _our_ historic bond. Don’t you remember the speech—it was all about _joining_ this and _suffering_ that, together in the darkness as _brothers_. You wouldn’t want me to suffer _alone_ in the darkness, would you, Nathaniel? That’s not very Warden-like of you. What would the Commander think? What would your _sister_ say?’

‘Enough,’ Nathaniel replied, eyes darting back and forth, as if he’d only just realized his tactical folly: choosing a quiet spot, yes, but one with no viable, roguish retreat.

‘So, what exactly happened last night?’ Anders asked. His fingers crept from Nathaniel’s bowstring to his sleeve, tugging at the stained cuff: miasmic residue and fell poison and a splash of dwarven ale. ‘Not… Not that I _care,_ mind you. It’s just that some of the guards up top seem to have this hilarious notion that I…’

‘Ran naked through the courtyard with Oghren singing about the Pearl’s ‘hidden diamond?’’ Nathaniel asked.

Anders felt the color drain from his face, pale as Jowan from the Fereldan Circle, or some other hapless blood mage thrall.

‘No?’ he asked.

Denial couldn’t hurt.

‘I returned to the throne room after that,’ Nathaniel said, pulling his sleeve free of Anders’s grip. ‘It became…difficult to observe. I’d speak with Sigrun if I were you. _She’s_ the one who dared you both to do it. Although I believe she wanted a nug involved, even if none was procured on such short notice.’

‘No,’ Anders said. ‘I’d definitely remember a nug. I always remember the nugs.’

Nathaniel’s dark brows were somber as ever. ‘Would you?’ he asked.

‘You’re joking,’ Anders told him. ‘…Only you don’t joke. You _aren’t_ joking.’

‘There, there,’ Nathaniel said, and made his escape, less of a rapscallion than usual, but no less swift.

*

‘ _I_ thought it was romantic,’ Sigrun told him, clutching a well-read copy of _The Arishok’s Spear_ to her chest. ‘The two of you—that _height difference_ —a mage and a dwarf getting all lovey-dovey and calling each other pet-names… I had no idea _Sparklefingers_ was a term of endearment. Dwarves can be just as complicated as humans, you know—and just as passionate.’

‘Augh,’ Anders said.

‘I refuse to contemplate such degraded horrors,’ Velanna told him, no more sickened than Anders felt. ‘As if the dwarf alone or you alone are not wretched enough, the two of you together are worse than all the Broodmothers in Kal’Hirol, _and_ just as… _naked._ ’

‘Augh,’ Anders said.

Seneschal Varel refused to speak to him—or look his way, but that wasn’t anything new—and the Warden Commander was nowhere to be found, off saving spirited orphans and innocent widows and slaying ogres one-handed, instead of ready to help Anders with his problems at the drop of a cowl.

‘A grave injustice has occurred in Amaranthine,’ Anders said, with no one else left to turn to.

Justice made a noise that sounded like _augh_ , a cough of displeasure; he had no words at all for the sins of flesh, the fallacies of manhood, or the depravity of alcohol.

‘Augh,’ Anders agreed.

*

At last, there was only Oghren, swaying in the sconce-light, red beard thick and braided with the remains of his most recent meal. Anders could feel the bristle-burn on his cheeks, could taste the old blaze of dwarven ale, and Oghren’s powerful shoulders twitched beneath thick-hammered silverite, probably red and raw and freckled, scoured with clutches from Anders’s fingernails.

‘You…’ Oghren began.

‘Me,’ Anders confirmed. ‘You?’

‘Maybe,’ Oghren replied.

On any other day, the diabolical simplicity of the exchange would have been a comfort.

‘Us,’ Anders said instead, and Oghren belched in contemplation. His forehead furrowed; his nose wrinkled up. He was going to say something important, Anders thought; he was going to remember, or going to forgive, or determined to forget. He was about to bestow a precocious dwarven sentiment that would make it all right, or divulge a dwarven secret for undoing dire mistakes, unthinking moments in a slip of foolish time.

Then, Oghren asked, ‘You ain’t with child now, are you? You’ve got those… _child-bearin’ hips._ ’

Anders wasn’t sure how it worked when it came to dwarven men and dwarven women, or dwarven anatomy in general. What he’d learned the night before remained hidden beneath a battered chestplate, cast in the shadow of a blunt-edged dwarven beard-braid and broad dwarven chin.

‘Oghren,’ Anders said, ‘I do hate to disappoint you, but that would be physically and socially and logically impossible.’

Oghren snorted. ‘Why’s that, huh? You feisty ones in skirts are all the same, anyway. Don’t see you for months, and suddenly— _blam!_ I’ve got _whelps_ to take care of.’

‘Not going to happen,’ Anders assured him.

‘So you say,’ Oghren muttered. ‘But I know _your_ ways.’

Anders leaned against the column beside him, and Oghren swayed, deceptively graceful but preternaturally heavy.

‘We can never speak of this again,’ Anders said. ‘I know it may seem cruel, but that’s just the way it has to be.’

Oghren blinked, peering at him with the bleary eyes of a newborn nug. ‘Who _are_ you?’

Anders felt a swell of relief, tempered by the electric jangle of nerves humming beneath his skin, like some other, arcane force. Oghren was taken care of, obviously—but Anders still had to worry about the others.

Whether Oghren was playing along or whether he’d actually forgotten the details didn’t matter much, in the grand design of greater Thedas—yet it was still a blow to Anders’s ego not to retain special Sparklefinger status.

*

The Warden Commander returned from his adventures just in time for supper, Anders picking at the cracked yellow skins of his roast potatoes while Velanna and Nathaniel whispered together at the other end of the table. Some called it conspiring; their twisted hearts thought of it as flirtation.

‘Not _yet,_ ’ Nathaniel said, jostling the table with a misplaced knee.

Anders leaned his chin in his hand, feeling the prick of new beard’s-growth against his palm. It was miserable not having someone’s foot to stroke under the table with his boot; Oghren’s stumpy little legs didn’t even reach the floor, and the Warden Commander’s spot was at the head of the table, too far for even the most dedicated of mages to reach.

‘Happy Feastday, Anders,’ the Warden Commander said. He dropped something ragged and mewling into Anders’s lap: an orange ball of fur that turned in a circle, then lifted its head and yawned, unfurling a fishy pink tongue in Anders’s face.

‘It’s a cat,’ Anders said.

‘It’s a _present,_ ’ the Warden Commander replied.

‘…It’s _Feastday,_ ’ Anders added, feeling the rush of air between his ears as the dwarven hammer struck the anvil at last.

‘For presents _and_ for pranks,’ Sigrun agreed, with a smile of beatification only a Dead Legionnaire could create.

‘Surprise!’ Velanna said. When no one followed her in getting to their feet, she folded her arms in a huff. ‘I _thought_ we were all going to shout surprise.’

‘I do not approve of misleading tactics,’ Justice announced, to the room at large, Anders’s only friend in the entire mess.

The kitten butted against Anders’s hand; it wanted his attention, and also pets. Kittens didn’t care if your dearest companions had callously destroyed your self esteem, enjoying a victory they’d be crowing about for weeks on end. Kittens just nipped at fingers until they got what they wanted, which usually amounted to a warm saucer of milk, or a roomy lap to sleep on.

‘So I didn’t…’ Anders began, just to be sure. ‘I mean, _we_ didn’t—’

From the far side of the room, Oghren trembled, the beginnings of a belch rumbling in his chest like stormclouds gathered over the jeweled Amaranthine sea.

‘Honestly,’ the Warden Commander said, taking his seat at the head of the table, ‘I’m starting to think I can’t turn my back on you lot for a second.’

‘I knew I’d remember the nugs,’ Anders said, and hoped they lived long enough to see vengeance next Feastday.

 **END**


End file.
